Why Cable TV Sucks and Why I Got Rid of It

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A few months ago I was reviewing some of my monthly bills and I came to the conclusion that it was time to dump cable TV. Why? Well it turns out that I was paying a significant amount of money for programming that I rarely watched.

Altogether I was paying about $140 per month for digital cable TV and broadband via Comcast. I also had HBO and the tier (or whatever it’s called) that gave me access to HD programming on HBO and on some other channels.

[Loyd Case: I agree about the cost. That’s why I’d like to see the cable and satellite networks go to ala carte’ programming.]

As part of that, I had to cough up $13 a month for Comcast’s HD-ready DVR. Their DVR was sort of like a lobotomized TiVo; it was awkward to use and I never could warm up to it. Primitive is about the kindest description I can use for that thing and for the awful remote control that came with it. Top it all off, the channel guide was also like a lame version of TiVo’s. It was ugly and too much of a headache to bother wading through most of the time.

[Loyd Case: You’re right. So maybe you should have considered getting an HD TiVo instead. Of course, that would have meant shelling out more money. I’m pretty happy with the Dish Network HD DVR I have currently, but the pricing is pretty much the same. But the UI is much cleaner than the standard Comcast DVR UI.]

Commercials: I’ve Had Enough!One of the worst things about cable TV is that you are forced to pay for access to programming that is filled with commercials. You’d think that you could get programming without commercials since you are paying for cable. Instead you only get commercial-free programming if you pay yet another fee for channels like HBO or Showtime.

Yes, I know that through the magic of DVRs you can “fast forward” through commercials but that gets tiresome too and who wants to bother? I’m just flat out sick of commercials and I don’t want to bother with hearing or seeing them anymore. If I want to buy something, I’ll buy it. I don’t need to hear how wonderful a particular kind of car is or what kind of pants will make me a manly man or whatever.

[Loyd Case: Whatever happened to commercials that are supposed to inform you about products? These days, it seems that commercials are trying too hard to entertain. On the other hand, if no one watches commercials, then we’ll see more embedded product placement, which can get ridiculous, as we saw with the Transformers movie.

On the other hand, I suppose you can get your quality TV show fix through Apple TV or Netflix, without the commercials. But then you are paying directly for the shows.]

I want peace and quiet…without ads blaring at me endlessly to buy more junk I don’t need in the first place. So commercials were a huge reason I ditched cable TV. Continued…

You’re comments about HD are a little weak. Content aside, an HD picture effectively blows away SD, no contest. The “HD” you’re watching is a highly-compressed facsimile which really isn’t much better looking than SD. Maybe a bit sharper, but that’s it. Try watching a well-mastered blu-ray if you want the real experience. There’s a ton of amazing content to be had on blu, if you’re a cinema lover. If you’re watching Transformers, well, nothing’s gonna help you then.

I like how the guy jumped in mentioning all the quality shows on TV.. mostly because in the grand scheme of things those few shows amount up to pretty much nothing. Most package plans have around 1000 channels and I generally end up watching no more than 2 to 3 hours of television a week. During Winterbreak television is COMPLETELY useless.

To get the newest episodes of the shows that actually matter I end up downloading. I don’t think of it as wrong.. I think of it as a missed opportunity by the cable/satellite companies. I mean, while they wait weeks on end, if even that, to upload an episode of a recently aired TV show.. I’m downloading it instead of paying some money and viewing the ads. Chances are after I’ve seen it once, I’m not going to watch it again.

And the internet has no borders whatsoever.. why then do you have to wait 6 months to a year to watch a show that just aired in the UK only to see it on an American television network? I’ve been downloading the show Merlin for the longest time.. it airs in the UK and then about a year or two later they slowly show it on the SyFy channel.

Speaking of which, why are websites restricted to region? A website has the potential to have the video player COMPLETELY surrounded in ads.. while a television has 4 minutes of ads every 7 minutes that everyone fast forwards through. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to stream episodes to websites?

Atrocious cable/satellite plans are somehow surviving while competing with the internet and I have absolutely no idea how. Can we just move on already? The internet is far superior.. and I’ll blow my brains out if I have to navigate another comcast menu.

I dumped cable a long time ago. The only thing i really miss is watching the Rockets & Astros. The Texans are on free TV. I got use to not following Rockets & Astros, that’s their loss for being greedy and going to cable tv. I know many more just like me. I will not pay for old re-run TV and all the home shopping, church, and spanish stations. If i want to watch a movie i stream Netflix or i do a torrent DL and stream it to my Xbox. Until the cable companies let me choose the stations i want to pay for it’s a full all out boycott by me! It would be cool if the Rockets & Astros had a tv app so i could stream all the Rockets games to a smart tv or smart tv device. I hope this is the future and i would be willing to pay a small fee.

Sebastian Kazmierczak

Have you tried the radio. I listen to the Cleveland Indians on the radio its so much better. I get to listen to Todd Hamilton. Houston should have Astros on the radio but the Rockets that’s a little harder. Hope it helps and good luck saving money.

Berkeley Fuller

I live in the East Bay (facing west towards San Francisco). I dumped Comcast too (RIDICULOUS “bundle” fee, atrocious and quite snotty service). I bought a $40 HD off-air antenna at Best Buy and a $200.00 “off-air DVR” (don’t know if it’s still available), originally manufactured by DISH-TV, amazingly enough). I get about 20 pretty good stations in BETTER HD than Comcast ever put out, and can record and zip through commercials — FOR ZERO per month. Already had a Roku box and occasionally buy an Amazon Vid-on-Demand movie (or a “free” Amazon prime movie or show). My monthly nut has fallen from $135.00 to about $80 (for Comcast’s bundled internet & phone). Comcast is FAST here (20mb) and has no internet competition. (The FCC has become the best regulator the media corps can buy). Was LOVELY to fire Comcast for TV — and everyone in your column is right — the Cable Companies are greedy jerks for forcing NON a-la-carte. Dopes. The CEO of HBO recently said that so many customers opting out of Cable is just a “short term problem with the economy.” He’s certainly re-arranging the deck chairs on HIS corporation’s Titanic. Ciao

Berkeley Fuller

PS to my comment (about a DVR for off-air HD television) — my “DVR-PAL” was manufactured by DISH, but a ye-olde-TV antenna company, Channel-Master, has bought it and apparently still sells this unit: http://www.channelmasterstore.com/HD_DVR_receiver_for_antenna_p/cm-7000pal.htm
It’s $339.00 which seems steep until you consider that there are NO subscription fees! The $55.00
a month I saved by ditching Comcast cable-TV means that you can “amortize” the purchase price for the DVR, typically — in just six months. Then you can put the monthly savings in the bank. The only “caveat” — you gotta be somewhere where there are lots of on-air HD stations (like San Francisco).

Scott

I yeah hey pretty good article. I got rid of my cable about two years ago. I went out and spent about $200 on the rooftop antenna. So now I get all four networks along with public television plus some old movie channels old TV channels. The four network channels are all in HD and the picture much better than I ever got off cable or any dish TV. I will admit I’m going to miss my Monday night football game. Yes off air TV for free you just can’t beat it.

tasha

you should try tvlinkup.com

Ged1s

Never had cable because it shows outdated movies, not to mention you gotta pay to watch it also….figured that torrenting bluray movies that are few months off theathers is the best way. Just hook up ur hard drive to tv and ur done lol. Everything 1080p. Some movies that are even still shown in theathers… Beats up all that cable tv that is so stone age these days….just bad.

j.f.k.

All you need is the internet ! cable & dish are old school! you are wasting your money!

charlie cable hater

cables suck

Sebastian Kazmierczak

Lets see I cut the cord saving 90 a month. Upgraded my DSL service from 35 to 55 dollars with broadband from At&t. At&t caps it to about 250 G a month, which is a lot to me. I get Netflix free from my sister, we spilt the bill. I get redbox movies or go to matinees to see movies. I also read more books. For sports, I listen to baseball on the radio and watch NFL on OTA for free, with the execption of Monday night. Basically, cable is a scam they repeat the same show or show low lifes on TV. Also, there is the 24 hour news that repeats. As does all the ESPN crap just different talking heads. With Netflix and renting movies from redbox I can watch whatever and whenever without dealing with commercials and saving lots of money. Its sort of funny that you can’t pay for programs you like only have to bundle. Because no one would watch the Kardashians or MTV. Think about it they would be bankrupt but you the consumer pay for that crap. Thank god I’m not that brainwashed.

Scott Minnella

I just cut cable myself. I was really sick of 2 things. One, the commercials like you say. They have gotten really out of hand lately, taking up half the programming. Second, the cost. I was happy paying $85-95 a month, but then when I saw my bill for Basic and 15 mps internet at $120 a month, I was fed up. GOODBYE TWC!

Earl Tash

I dont have cable tv or dish…. Not a thing on tv i cant find on the web. Yes i have internet. I can hook the tv to the laptop for better viewing.

David A Sawyer

I agree about Comcast. Their DVR boxes are lobotomized or something. Slow to load, hard to search for anything, disorganized, random settings, and the box we have for the bedroom is different then the box in our living room Soooo we need to memorize twice the frustration. At first I thought I couldn’t figure it out because I was getting old but to tell you the truth Comcast / Xfinity is nuts, crazy, obnoxious, and irritating. And after it’s all said and done cable is just a bunch of reruns anyway. We basically wanted just internet with no phone or cable since we both use cell phones and cable never seems to change. Also news stations like CNN and FOX have not had good journalism in over a decade. Also both CNN and FOX are starting to do these random history things like flashback of the 60s and the life story of pop culture figures. ha ha ha How is that even news? It’s over priced stupid and irritating. And when you throw these crazy cable boxes with remotes that make no logical sense it’s just an expensive mess…… When we move we might just go back to over the air digital TV.. Though when we moved to this area (Concord NH) we noticed that even an expensive digital antenna could not pick up ABC, NBC, or CBS even though it’s a city of 40,000 people we could only get a handful of home shopping channels and ION tv (which only seemed to have cooking shows of arrogant smug chefs ha ha). So we sort of had no choice but to get cable. Sad.

Even at the time this was written Loyd Case’s commentary on page 2 about good shows was worthless- those were all available over the air on network television and didn’t require cable. I’ve been a streamer since 2009 have honestly never missed cable programming once. Goodbye and good riddance.

Shortride Harley-Davidson

I live in a small town community. We have two choices for TV service. Either satellite TV or local cable TV. I can’t get internet service without TV service without spending an absorbent amount for channels that I’m not interested in. Our local cable service includes about 3 religious channels, two Spanish speaking channels, 3 hunting channels and for the most part the remainders is comedy and reality TV. I could almost tolerate my cable service if it was anything except re-run after re-run. The other part that’s difficult to deal with is the poor service. The audio is terrible, either decent on one channel and glass breaking on the next channel. Wasn’t there supposed to be a fairly new regulation to control these commercials with ear deafening sound volume? On any given day there’s almost always no reception or poor reception on at least 2 channels.

We oppose subsidizing television programming that we do not want
or use. Being charged for ‘packages’ of programming (religious, sports, home
shopping, infomercial, and faux news as examples) that we will never use, and
being denied programming that we DO want because it doesn’t fit into a
pre-determined ‘package’ is nothing less than legalized corporate extortion. We
petition for a regulation of the television provider industry, to mandate them
to stop charging for and forcing unwanted programming on subscribers, and begin
programs offering ‘ala carte’ packaging based on actual buyer desires and use.

if dish is so good, why do you have to sign up for 2 year contract with a very large buy out. I have dishtv/internet with showtime and it cost me $159 a month. 1 chanel shows l&O SU V 90% of the time 1 other show CSI Mia,or L&O most of the time I actual get 4 0r 6 chanels plus showtime which shows the same movies for a mouth, and showtime on demand is surposed to be included with show time, but it cost you in the internet minutes.

Brady

you just can’t try dish, you sign a contr. Which plan are you on and how much does it cost. you work for dish what kinda of employee discount do you get, if any?

Shortride Harley-Davidson

agree that my cable TV service is nothing but garbage. The major cable news media are television tabloids that create the news instead of reporting it. Everything seems to be nothing but “BREAKING NEWS’ every time. Over and over reporting of some of the least important or interesting subjects. It’s absolutely terrible. The newest generation of writers have absolutely no imagination other than sex and murder. I’m seriously considering turning my service off. What else is available? Is all of TV broadcasting like this?

AETERNA

> work for Dish

Inb4 anyone else realizes – paid corporate shill

Jeff Webb

I dumped cable TV years ago, put up an OTA antenna and stream the rest. We do now need news readers to read the news to us.

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